The Texan cellist had a glamorous career as a performer and patron

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In the late 1970s or early 1980s, I was a music student digging for gold in the vinyl record racks of a San Antonio record store and found an album, “Twentieth Century Cello â€, recorded by Gilberto Munguia with the accompaniment of Thomas Hrynkiv (also spelled Hrynkiw in other contexts). I didn’t know the music and the performers, but I bought it on a whim. It was accompanied by a copy of a review by David Anthony Richelieu of the Express-News which praised Mr. Munguia’s musicality and mentioned that he had played around San Antonio until the time of the critical.

This is the only recorded music available that I have found by him; and when I recently browsed the internet it seemed like this album had taken on a life of its own, currently being offered in a variety of formats up to and including digital. Yet other than an old article discussing his instrument, there is no information on this man or even any information on whether he is alive or dead. The only clues I can offer are Richelieu’s undated review and the LP cover. Critics mentioned that he was a native of Kingsville, and the album was produced in 1976 on the Laurel-ProTone label. His performance is sublime, and I just wish I could tell him that he has been a constant favorite for over 40 years.

Hope you might consider researching Mr. Munguia. He may not be interested in being contacted, and I would be happy to know that he is still there to make wonderful music.

– Jon Doran

Almost everything that has been written about him describes him as “Texas-born Mexican-American cellist” Gilberto Munguia, an identity that has distinguished him throughout his career.

Munguia was born in 1937 in Kingsville to Josefa and Gilberto Munguia, then a dairy clerk and later a welder on the Missouri-Pacific Railroad who had also moonlighted on weekends in a dance band.

Young Gilberto learned to play the piano from his aunt at the age of 6 and gave his first recital at the age of 8. The cello came later, when a neighbor who was wearing one on the street stopped to play him something, and he decided to learn the instrument himself.

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At King High School, according to the 1955 yearbook, Munguia was part of the string ensemble, school choir, student government, and debate team. He made his first cello in a statewide orchestra and was recruited by North Texas State University (later the University of North Texas), from where he transferred to Louisiana State University. Munguia received her Masters of Music from Yale University and embarked on an international music career, with New York as her home base.

He has performed in orchestras of Broadway shows including “The Apple Tree” and “Promises, Promises”, was one of 100 cellists under Pablo Casals, served in various symphony orchestras and left for Italy in 1970 to join a chamber musician. musical ensemble. Upon his return to New York, he decided to concentrate on a career as a solo artist, made an appearance at Carnegie Hall and toured for years in the United States, Europe, Mexico and South America.

In the year since the album “Twentieth Century Cello”, featuring mostly Hispanic composers active in that century, Munguia did a few tours of Texas, including an eight-week residency “Affiliate Artist. “at Trinity University, where he gave several concerts.

For most of his working life, Kingsville – described in a union profile as a “dusty South Texas niche” – had stayed away in his rearview mirror. He told the author of this 1977 profile that he had “this hysteria that if I ever came back, I would never go out again.”

At that time he was living in Hillsborough, California, an upscale suburb of San Francisco, where he had moved after his marriage to former Harriet Katz (1913-2005), a twice divorced patron for whom philanthropy was a tradition. family. Katz’s grandfather, Jacob Epstein, who established the nation’s first mail order wholesale business, was a founder of the Baltimore Museum of Art and a supporter of Johns Hopkins University and other institutions.

She had previously been married to clothing manufacturer Lee Greif, with whom she had her only child, Kenneth Greif (1936-1919); and lawyer Milton Eulau, with whom she lived on Park Avenue in New York. Both marriages ended in divorce; his real passion seemed to have been the arts. According to her obituary in the Palm Beach Daily News for November 23, 2005, she was a founding member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York and “supported musical institutions in New York, Baltimore, San Francisco as well as the foreign and was a member of the Morgan Library (in New York).

When the couple married on November 14, 1974, in Easthampton, Long Island, NY, their union took second place in the New York Times the next day to that of opera star Anna Moffo and president of the RCA Board of Directors, Robert Sarnoff. It was noted that this was the third marriage for Harriet Katz Eula of New York and Amagansett (Long Island).

In 1976, the Munguia moved to San Francisco, where her obituary says that she “supported her husband’s founding of the Chamber Soloists of San Francisco in 1979” and became a patron of that city’s Mexican Museum, as well as its symphony and its opera. The couple had homes in Florida, Maine, and Mexico; awards and scholarships established for young musicians (at least one of which is awarded to Kingsville); and donated art to museums, including the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio.

Perhaps their greatest achievement as a powerful couple in the arts was their 1987 co-founding of a music festival in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. Munguia was the director, and he and his wife organized the annual event with the help of volunteers.

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The Munguias “fell in love with San Miguel on a visit … built a wonderful house there and embarked on the only music festival held during the Christmas and New Year holidays,” recounts a travelogue in Newtown. (Connecticut) Bee, January 1. 18, 1991, crediting their “incredible energy and considerable charm” for its success. The cellist hired “(classical) musicians from as far away as Japan and as close as Mexico City” and played the dual role of impresario and performer. “Its thoughtful and lively playing is no less frequent than any other festival participant,” says the bee, “and the range of music at least as demanding.”

Munguia continued to perform on occasion, lead workshops, and continue as director of the San Miguel Festival until at least 2008.

He was scheduled to perform in a pair of engagements with the Chamber Music Society of Sacramento in Davis, Calif., And Sacramento, Calif. On October 18-19, 2014, where he was scheduled to perform with pianist Thomas Hrynkiw and other musicians. . Another cellist had to take his place, and it was reported that he was indisposed and unable to travel.

Munguia had no children, nor did her stepson, who died in 2019. Anyone with more to add to the history of the cellist can contact this column.

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